Alice Walker is a award-winning African American writer best recognized for her writings on race and gender.
Her novel “The Color Purple” earned both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award.
Walker, who was born in Georgia to a sharecropper father and a maid mother, endured difficulty as a youngster when a car accident left her half blind.
This emotionally draining event pushed her to seek refuge in writing. Walker became valedictorian from a segregated high school and went on to attend Spelman College and subsequently Sarah Lawrence College on scholarship.
Despite personal anguish, her creative career flourished, creating novels, short tales, and poems that unflinchingly portray the challenges of African American women.
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Her writing, which has been translated into over a dozen languages, addresses subjects such as racial inequity, female genital mutilation, and the healing effect of nature, garnering her praise for her ability to approach emotionally charged issues in sympathetic ways.
I have made a list of the great quotes by Alice Walker.
Best Alice Walker Quotes
Time moves slowly, but passes quickly. ~ Alice Walker.
Healing begins where the wound was made. ~ Alice Walker.
Any God I ever found in church, I brought in myself. ~ Alice Walker.
The more I wonder, the more I love. ~ Alice Walker.
Hard times require furious dancing. Each of us is proof. ~ Alice Walker.
Surely the earth can be saved by all the people who insist on love. ~ Alice Walker.
In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own. ~ Alice Walker.
I don’t need a certain number of friends, just a number of friends I can be certain of. ~ Alice Walker.
Every small positive change we make in ourselves repays us in confidence in the future. ~ Alice Walker.
Freedom, after all, is like love: the more you give to others, the more you have. ~ Alice Walker.
The nature of this flower is to bloom. ~ Alice Walker.
What you hope for, you also fear. ~ Alice Walker.
Horses make a landscape look beautiful. ~ Alice Walker.
Famous Alice Walker Quotes
I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have. ~ Alice Walker.
I am not lesbian, I am not bisexual, I am not straight. I am just curious. ~ Alice Walker.
Anything we love can be saved. ~ Alice Walker.
You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about. ~ Alice Walker.
In South Korea, they believe that when you turn 60, you’ve become a baby again and the rest of your life should be totally about joy and happiness, and people should leave you alone, and I just think that that’s the height of intelligence. ~ Alice Walker.
My God is not a religious God. My God is nature, my God is everything there is. That’s God. Everything is God. I’m a child of that. ~ Alice Walker.
To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves… We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love, and die. ~ Alice Walker.
She thought of how precious it was to be able to know another person over many years. There was incomparable richness in it. ~ Alice Walker.
You really can’t be a good artist if you can’t say what you really feel. And people may be offended, but, you know, that’s how you feel, and that is your right, and that is your gift as well. ~ Alice Walker.
If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it. ~ Alice Walker.
People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools. ~ Alice Walker.
Look closely at the present you are constructing: it should look like the future you are dreaming. ~ Alice Walker.
Every time I conjure up a rock, I throw it. ~ Alice Walker.
Everything is already perfect. And if you can accept that everything is already perfect, the imperfection is a part of the perfection. What’s to worry about? ~ Alice Walker.
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see it always trying to please us back. ~ Alice Walker.
Inspiring Alice Walker Quotes
Writing permits me to be more than I am. Writing permits me to experience life as any number of strange creations. ~ Alice Walker.
If you want to have a life that is worth living, a life that expresses your deepest feelings and emotions, and cares and dreams, you have to fight for it. ~ Alice Walker.
Be an outcast. Be pleased to walk alone. ~ Alice Walker.
The most important question in the world is, ‘Why is the child crying?’ ~ Alice Walker.
You can’t truly have an open heart until it’s been broken. ~ Alice Walker.
Clearly older women and especially older women who have led an active life or elder women who successfully maneuver through their own family life have so much to teach us about sharing, patience, and wisdom. ~ Alice Walker.
Is solace anywhere more comforting than that in the arms of a sister. ~ Alice Walker.
Abortion, for many women, is more than an experience of suffering beyond anything most men will ever know, it is an act of mercy, and an act of self-defense. ~ Alice Walker.
I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart. ~ Alice Walker.
For in the end, freedom is a personal and lonely battle; and one faces down fears of today so that those of tomorrow might be engaged. ~ Alice Walker.
As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can. ~ Alice Walker.
But I don’t know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive. ~ Alice Walker.
Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be. ~ Alice Walker.
Why any woman give a shit what people think is a mystery to me. ~ Alice Walker.
Top Alice Walker Quotes
Poetry is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution, and the raising of consciousness. ~ Alice Walker.
When life descends into the pit I must become my own candle Willingly burning myself to light up the darkness around me. ~ Alice Walker.
The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. ~ Alice Walker.
Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly. ~ Alice Walker.
She was so quiet. So reflective. And she could erase herself, her spirit, with a swiftness that truly startled, when she knew the people around her could not respect it. ~ Alice Walker.
Peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited. ~ Alice Walker.
Yes, Mother. I can see you are flawed. You have not hidden it. That is your greatest gift to me. ~ Alice Walker.
‘Thank you’ is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding. ~ Alice Walker.
Nature has created us with the capacity to know God, to experience God. ~ Alice Walker.
You don’t really stay attached to things. Life goes on, so you don’t really sit around and think about how they are relevant to other people. You hope that whatever you create will be relevant. ~ Alice Walker.
Books became my world because the world I was in was very hard. ~ Alice Walker.
Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate. ~ Alice Walker.
I have fallen in love with the imagination. And if you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything. ~ Alice Walker.
How simple a thing it seems to me that to know ourselves as we are, we must know our mothers names. ~ Alice Walker.
We will be ourselves and free, or die in the attempt. Harriet Tubman was not our great-grandmother for nothing. ~ Alice Walker.
Popular Alice Walker Quotes
When the ax came into the forest the trees said the handle is one of us. ~ Alice Walker.
We’re going to have to debunk the myth that Africa is a heaven for black people – especially black women. We’ve been the mule of the world there and the mule of the world here. ~ Alice Walker.
Resistance is the secret of joy! ~ Alice Walker.
Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself. ~ Alice Walker.
The Animals of the planet are in desperate peril and they are fully aware of this. No less than human beings are doing in all parts of the world, they are seeking sanctuary. ~ Alice Walker.
Human compassion is equal to human cruelty, and it is up to each of us to tip the balance. ~ Alice Walker.
Never be the only one, except, possibly, in your own home. ~ Alice Walker.
I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to. ~ Alice Walker.
I think that indigenous women’s wisdom is crucial. So much of the care of the Earth has come from the mothers. I think it’s imperative we turn to their wisdom in how to take care of the planet. ~ Alice Walker.
A writer’s heart, a poet’s heart, an artist’s heart, a musician’s heart is always breaking. It is through that broken window that we see the world… ~ Alice Walker.
No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow. ~ Alice Walker.
Revolt is the mirror in which greed is forced to see itself. ~ Alice Walker.
Great Alice Walker Quotes
Too much respect for people who are not respectful to you is a sure sign of insecurity. ~ Alice Walker.
No matter how hidden the cruelty, no matter how far off the screams of pain and terror, we live in one world. We are one people. ~ Alice Walker.
Activism is my rent for living on the planet. ~ Alice Walker.
Not everyone’s life is what they make it. Some people’s life is what other people make it. ~ Alice Walker.
All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world. ~ Alice Walker.
No song or poem will bear my mother’s name. Yet so many of the stories that I write, that we all write, are my mother’s stories. ~ Alice Walker.
The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. ~ Alice Walker.
Positive Alice Walker Quotes
Time moves quickly but passes quickly. ~ Alice Walker.
Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender. ~ Alice Walker.
Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength – in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own. ~ Alice Walker.
Writing saved me from the sin and inconvenience of violence – as it saves most writers who live in ‘interesting’ oppressive times and are not afflicted by personal immunity. ~ Alice Walker.
It’s so important to unclutter the mind. For me, creativity is greatly impeded just by the chatter and visual clutter of life. It’s really important to have a space that is really clear for whatever is emerging to come. ~ Alice Walker.
Ignorance, arrogance, and racism have bloomed as Superior Knowledge in all too many universities. ~ Alice Walker.
Being happy is not the only happiness. ~ Alice Walker.
A grown child is a dangerous thing. ~ Alice Walker.
There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life. ~ Alice Walker.
Inspirational Alice Walker Quotes
What the mind doesn’t understand, it worships or fears. ~ Alice Walker.
Wish for nothing larger than your own small heart. ~ Alice Walker.
I’m the most stubborn person I know. ~ Alice Walker.
Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us. ~ Alice Walker.
It no longer bothers me that I may be constantly searching for father figures; by this time, I have found several and dearly enjoyed knowing them all. ~ Alice Walker.
Anybody can observe the Sabbath, but making it holy surely takes the rest of the week. ~ Alice Walker.
The gift of loneliness is sometimes a radical vision of society or one’s people that has not previously been taken into account. ~ Alice Walker.
We sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get the attention we do, except walk? ~ Alice Walker.
Alice Walker Quotes on Writing
I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame. ~ Alice Walker.
Writing is not different from life – you want variety, you want refreshment, and you want balance. ~ Alice Walker.
Writing poems is my way of celebrating with the world that I have not committed suicide the evening before. ~ Alice Walker.
We writers – we’re the snowflakes of the literary world. We each have our own shape. ~ Alice Walker.
Only dead people need loud music, you know. ~ Alice Walker.
Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly. ~ Alice Walker.
It is natural to want to have a future. ~ Alice Walker.
In nature, nothing is perfect and everything is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways, and they’re still beautiful. ~ Alice Walker.
Powerful Alice Walker Quotes
Whenever you are creating beauty around you, you are restoring your own soul. ~ Alice Walker.
I don’t call myself a Buddhist. I’m a free spirit. I believe I’m here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that’s my religion. ~ Alice Walker.
I see children, all children, as humanity’s most precious resource, because it will be to them that the care of the planet will always be left. ~ Alice Walker.
It is healthier, in any case, to write for the adults one’s children will become than for the children one’s ‘mature’ critics often are. ~ Alice Walker.
I don’t focus on criticism. I prefer to praise people and the world, rather than criticize them and it. ~ Alice Walker.
Love is big; love can hold anger, love can even hold hatred. It’s about the intention of what you want it to do. ~ Alice Walker.
Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise. ~ Alice Walker.
Wherever I have knocked, a door has opened. Wherever I have wandered, a path has appeared. ~ Alice Walker.
Well, I think indigenous peoples have ways of living on the Earth that they’ve had forever. And they’ve been overrun by organized religion, which has had a lot of money and power. ~ Alice Walker.
So these were the 110 top Alice Walker quotes on writing, love, life, feminism, nature, power and change.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Best Life quotes and George Washington Carver quotes.
